Google's decision last year to kill Google Reader, its RSS feed and Web-based service, allowed a then-tiny rival to grow into a company with revenue of at least $1.3 million annually.

Feedly, which became the most popular alternative to Google's Reader after the search giant announced in March 2013 that it was abandoning the RSS space, today celebrated its one-year anniversary of "Feedly Cloud," the service and API that let other developers tap into the firm's RSS feed delivery service.

Feedly Pro on iOS includes a search tool, which isn't available to free members.

In a blog post Friday, Edwin Khodabakchian, CEO and co-founder of DevHD -- the company behind Feedly -- also said that its paying customer base is currently at 35,000.

"The Pro community is now 35,000 members strong, and we'd like to thank you for backing us and allowing us to innovate faster," Khodabakchian wrote.

Feedly offers both a free version of its service and a premium level, dubbed "Pro," that offers an expanded set of features, including search, faster access to RSS feeds from smaller websites, and integration with Evernote, Dropbox, Microsoft's OneNote application and other services. Pro members may also vote on future additions to Feedly; the current top vote-getter is for an offline mode in the mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Feedly charges $5 per month or $45 annually for a Pro membership.

Because Feedly sold life-time memberships for a short period last year to the first 5,000 customers, the number of Pro users on a monthly or annual subscription is probably close to 30,000. At $45 each, that's revenue of $1.35 million each year.

This story, "Google RSS death creates $1.3M business" was originally published by
Computerworld.

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